ATTORNEY WHO REPRESENTS ARISTIDE IN MIAMI

MIAMI - A top Haitian police official in the government of ousted
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is facing trial on charges that he
accepted thousands of dollars in bribes to help Colombian drug lords
move huge loads of cocaine through the impoverished Caribbean country.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin later this week in the case
against Evintz Brillant, the only one of four former senior Haitian
police officials who has not pleaded guilty in the investigation of
drug trafficking inside the Aristide government.

The three who pleaded guilty are expected to cooperate in the U.S.
government's against Brillant, who has pleaded innocent and faces a
life sentence if convicted. The trial's scheduled Monday start before
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was delayed a few days by the
approach of Tropical Storm Rita.

According the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Brillant used his
post as head of Haiti's top anti-drug police unit from 2001 to 2004 to
help drug traffickers ship thousands of pounds of cocaine through
Haiti, including the airport in the capital of Port-au-Prince, to the
United States, Europe and elsewhere.

Brillant and other top Haitian police officials, DEA Agent Noble
Harrison said in a court affidavit, "agreed to look the other way
when shipments of cocaine were in transit" in exchange for bribes.

The investigation has produced no evidence implicating Aristide, even
though some convicted drug dealers have insisted that the former
president was intimately involved in trafficking through Haiti.
Aristide was ousted in February 2004 and is now living in exile in
South Africa.

"There was never any evidence and there remains no evidence of it,"
said attorney Ira Kurzban, who represents Aristide in Miami. "They've
been trying for two years. There is no case."

Brillant is specifically accused by U.S. prosecutors of being involved
in the drug network controlled by convicted Haitian drug trafficker
Sergo Edouard. Brillant was paid $10,000 in one instance for agreeing
to protect drug shipments and got a share of $150,000 from another
trafficker to provide similar security.

Although the Haitian police arrests were trumpeted as a major success
in the war on drugs by the Bush administration, a U.S. State
Department report issued earlier this year says that the flow of
Colombian cocaine and other drugs through Haiti continues virtually
unchallenged.

The report says that Haiti, with its 1,125 miles of virtually wide
open coastline, clandestine airstrips, uncontrolled seaports and
police corruption make it difficult for the Haitian government to stop
the drug trade.

"Haitian drug trafficking organizations continue to operate with
relative impunity," says the March report. "Haiti remains an
important transit country for Colombian drug traffickers."

Freighters are most often used to transport the drugs directly from
Haiti to the United States, concealed in shipments of legitimate items
such as cement or in hidden compartments. Aircraft are also used, and
some drugs are driven over the border with the Dominican Republic to
be sent to Puerto Rico and elsewhere, the report says.

The other Haitian police officials who have pleaded guilty are Jean
Nesly Lucien, the former national police director; Rudy Therassan, a
former commander with the police; and Romaine Lestin, former police
chief at the Port-au-Prince airport.

Therassan was sentenced in July to 15 years in prison, while Lucien
and Lestin are scheduled for sentencing in November.